There’s a driving rhythm, which seems unusual on a kantele tune, and it’s the rhythm that dominates helped by an electric bass, until a fiddle melody finds its way out and soars upwards like a bird. The tune is called ‘Kisavirsi’ (Swaying Tune), a flowing dance piece as performed on the kantele back in Kalevala times. But this version is far from dry or historical. Although the instruments are traditional it sounds pretty contemporary.
The group is Salamakannel (Lightning Kantele) – an instrumental quartet – and this is their first record in over 30 years. Their first album Salamakannel was released in 1989 and was followed by two others in 1990 and 1992. The original band name, Salamakannel, was inspired by Hannu Saha’s electric kantele, a new innovation at the time, commissioned from fellow band member Jussi Ala-Kuha. In his review of that debut album in the British magazine Folk Roots, Andrew Cronshaw didn’t mention the electric kantele but concludes “the wittiness and flexibility of the musicianship is what makes the album such a discovery.”
These words from 35 years ago could equally apply to the new release, Salamakannel IV (2024). The album features two original members from previous albums: Hannu Saha on kantele and Arto Järvelä (of JPP, Tallari, and several other notable Finnish folk bands) on fiddle. They are joined by Antti Kettunen on guitar and Kimmo Känsälä on electric bass.
So why have they come back together after 30 years?
“In the last years I was working as a professional in cultural policy”, says kantele player Hannu Saha, who has worked in the Finnish Music Foundation (MES), as a professor in the Sibelius Academy and head of the Arts Council of Finland. “And when you are doing that it’s better not to be working publicly as an artist. Now I’ve retired, I feel I can play again.”
The Salamakannel IV album launch was in the handsome Pelimannitalo or the Musicians’ House in Kaustinen. “That was the perfect place,” says Saha, “because it was really the place we started in 1983.”
The changing Finnish folk music scene
The Finnish folk music scene has changed immensely over these 40 years, largely thanks to the Folk Music Department of the Sibelius Academy. Arto Järvelä was a student in its inaugural year in 1983.
“The Sibelius Academy has schooled a whole new generation, so now there is so much more going on,” Järvelä says. “There’s a lot of competition which grows the level of musicianship. The Sibelius Academy Folk Music Department has been the most important thing for the development of our national music and heritage.”
Salamakannel is a curious mix of different traditions, which is perhaps difficult for non-Finns to break down. The band is really led by the kantele, the Finnish zither and national instrument. Hannu Saha plays 10-string, 15-string and 36-string kanteles on the album. The 36-string kantele is diatonic, not chromatic, and is the main instrument of the pelimanni (folk band) tradition in Western Finland where it was combined with the fiddles of the folk bands – as played by Arto Järvelä. His ‘Salamahumppa’ typifies this with its catchy, dance-like violin melody in which a humppa meets a barn dance and sounds like a lot of fun. The 36-string kantele is basically tuned in D major, but Saha says he’s playing in seven different keys on the album.
Hannu Saha did his doctoral thesis on the kantele music of the Perho River Valley in western Finland which flows through Perho, Veteli and Kaustinen and into the Gulf of Bothnia. “Now we know the region for its fiddle music, but before that the kantele was the most important instrument in the Perho River villages,” he explains.
That more recent tradition is juxtaposed in Salamakannel with older kantele traditions found in the east of the country as in the ‘Kisavirsi’ dance tune and ‘Eliaan Kirkonkellot’ (The Bells of Elias), which imitates the bells of an Orthodox Church. The sound is deep and sonorous and it seems you can hear the sound of the bell ropes and the mechanism as well as the chiming bells. With a violin melody played over the bell-like kantele sounds it’s full of glorious overtones creating an extraordinary reverberant sound world.
From tradition to innovation
Talking about the oldest layer of kantele music Hannu Saha mentions that the basic instrument just has five notes “and they just played a stream of notes, totally improvised. Heikki Laitinen [who basically devised the Folk Music course at the Sibelius Academy] says in the old Kalevala times we had only one tune and it was called music. You can’t separate a melody or tune – it’s just a flowing of notes.” This is the essence of the ‘Kisavirsi’ track.
Another of Saha’s tracks is a portrait of the Taimela house in Humppila, near Forssa, from where he’s doing our Zoom call. It’s an old wooden house, dating from 1910, where his grandparents and later his parents retired. And it’s where he’s enjoying his own ‘retirement’ now. The slow and stately ‘Taimela’ track creates the impression of a pretty elegant house as kantele and violin tunes interweave, but its not all traditional as Antti Kettunen comes out with a Pink Floyd-like electric guitar solo to bring it to a close.
Most of the pieces on IV are original compositions by Hannu Saha and Arto Järvela, with one by Kettunen – but ‘Aarnion Marssi’ (Aarnio’s March) is a traditional pelimanni wedding march from Saha’s village, Humppila. Each of the four musicians gets their solo spot – with ringing kantele and Arto Järvela on mandolin rather than fiddle.
There are also a couple of vocal tracks on the album. These are performed by pop singer Jonna Tervomaa – who lives close to Saha’s home – and rock singer Ismo Alanko.
“He is one of the greatest rock singers in Finland with a great career for 40 years now,” Saha explains. He’d done a show with Kimmo Pohjonen and Ismo Alanko playing all kinds of electric kanteles in Kaustinen in 2002 and they’d performed ‘Tuomi on Virran Reunalla’ (The Bird Cherry Tree Beside the Stream) – a famous traditional song – and he was keen to do it again.
“I wanted Jonna and Ismo first of all because they are very good singers but also all the Finnish people know them. So it’s good to have friends like that with you on the record” – Saha laughs – “But that’s not the most important thing.”
Since Salamakannel’s first album in 1989 the influence of Americana has lessened and there’s consequently a stronger reliance on Finnish material on Salamakannel IV. But perhaps the most important difference is that Hannu Saha is no longer using his electric kantele, made by the late Jussi Ala-Kuha, which is now an exhibit in Kaustinen’s Folk Music Institute. His large kantele was made by the celebrated maker Otto Koistinen in 1971.
“The acoustic kantele sound is the best – all the overtone structure is there – and I have a good pick-up and I get a better acoustic sound than with an electric kantele. Now I can achieve a particularly natural acoustic sound or use different sound effects devices in a more electronic way.”
Featured photo: Susanna Salokannel
